RHS Occasional Papers from the Lindley Library Volume 12
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Occasional Papers from The RHS Lindley Library IBRARY L INDLEY L , RHS VOLUME TWELVE SEPTEMBER 2014 Horticulture and the First World War Cover illustration: Postcard of inmates with pumpkins and gourds at Ruhleben Horticultural Society. Occasional Papers from the RHS Lindley Library Editor: Dr Brent Elliott Production & layout: Richard Sanford Printed copies are distributed to libraries and institutions with an interest in horticulture. Volumes are also available on the RHS website (www. rhs.org.uk/occasionalpapers). Requests for further information may be sent to the Editor at the address (Vincent Square) below, or by email ([email protected]). Access and consultation arrangements for works listed in this volume The RHS Lindley Library is the world’s leading horticultural library. The majority of the Library’s holdings are open access. However, our rarer items, including many mentioned throughout this volume, are fragile and cannot take frequent handling. The works listed here should be requested in writing, in advance, to check their availability for consultation. Items may be unavailable for various reasons, so readers should make prior appointments to consult materials from the art, rare books, archive, research and ephemera collections. It is the Library’s policy to provide or create surrogates for consultation wherever possible. We are actively seeking fundraising in support of our ongoing surrogacy, preservation and conservation programmes. For further information, or to request an appointment, please contact: RHS Lindley Library, London RHS Lindley Library, Wisley 80 Vincent Square RHS Garden Wisley London SW1P 2PE Woking GU23 6QB T: 020 7821 3050 T: 01483 212428 E: [email protected] E : [email protected] Occasional Papers from The RHS Lindley Library Volume 12, September 2014 B. Elliott. A horticultural satire on the German war 3 B. Elliott. A tale of two societies: the Royal Horticultural 31 Society and the Ruhleben Horticultural Society The internment camp at Ruhleben 32 The beginnings of gardening at Ruhleben 39 The founding of the Ruhleben Horticultural Society 41 Individuals 44 Flower gardening and flower shows 48 The vegetable garden 57 Farewell to Ruhleben 61 Appendix: German prisoners of war in England 66 B. Elliott. Bolshevism in the garden 77 Gardens fit for heroes? 78 The British Gardeners’ Association: early history 82 Labour unrest among gardeners at the end of the War 86 Date of publication of previous volume Occasional Papers from the RHS Lindley Library Volume 11 (January 2014) was published on 18th February 2014. Occasional Papers from the RHS Lindley Library ISSN 2043-0477 Published by: The RHS Lindley Library, The Royal Horticultural Society, 80 Vincent Square, London SW1P 2PE Printed by: Advantage Digital Print, The Old Radio Station, Bridport Road, Dorchester, Dorset DT2 9FT © Royal Horticultural Society 2014 Charity registration number 222879 / SC038262 Occasional Papers from the RHS Lindley Library Volume Twelve September 2014 Horticulture and the First World War Published in 2014 by the RHS Lindley Library The Royal Horticultural Society 80 Vincent Square, London SW1P 2PE All rights reserved. The RHS asserts its copyright in this publication. No part of it may be reproduced in another publication without written permission from the Publisher. ISSN 2043-0477 Copyright © The Royal Horticultural Society 2014 Printed by: Advantage Digital Print, The Old Radio Station, Bridport Road, Dorchester, Dorset DT2 9FT visit the Royal Horticultural Society at: www.rhs.org.uk OCCASIONAL PAPERS FROM THE RHS LINDLEY LIBRARY 12: 3–30 (2014) 3 A horticultural satire on the German war BRENT ELLIOTT c/o The Lindley Library, the Royal Horticultural Society, London In 1915 there appeared a little book of cartoons with a horticultural theme: War Plants or Products of Intensive Kultur, by Claude C. H. Woodhouse. This work is little known and has never been reprinted to my knowledge. Not much is known about Claude Henry Chaloner Woodhouse. Born in 1869, the son of a general practitioner, he was educated at Westminster School, University College, and the Royal School of Mines. He was a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. At some point in the 1890s Woodhouse began to take his vacations in Bordighera, where he eventually settled, in a house named “Villa Agincourt”. Bordighera in the 1890s was virtually an expatriate English colony, English residents or regular visitors outnumbering the local population. In 1898, Woodhouse, with a colleague named Granville H. Baillie (presumably the Granville Hugh Baillie, 1873–1951, who later became known for his history of watches), formed a company called the Riviera Electric Supply Company. In 1901 they received a royal warrant to build a tramway from Bordighera to Ventimiglia (a proposed later extension to Mentone was never completed). The Tranvia Ventimiglia-Bordighera remained functional for three decades, but was finally closed in 1936. Woodhouse died in 1934, at his villa in Bordighera. I have been unable to find anything about his horticultural activities. The principal British horticultural figure at Bordighera in his time was Clarence Bicknell, the author of Flowering Plants and Ferns of the Riviera (1885) and of a Flora of Bordighera and San Remo (1896); but Woodhouse’s name does not appear in Bicknell’s visitors’ book (available online at www.marcusbicknell.co.uk/ clarence), and I have not traced any contact between them. Woodhouse’s little book of cartoons was published when the war had been going for over half a year. In the following pages, it is reproduced in its entirety, with some explanatory comments at the base of the pages and in additional notes at the end. Gardeners will find the horticultural comments superfluous, but might well need the period political references explained. For aficionados of the First World War, most of the comments about the wartime events and the German cultural background pilloried in the cartoons will be familiar, but the horticultural content may not. © 2014 The Royal Horticultural Society 4 BRENT ELLIOTT IBRARY L INDLEY L , RHS Cover. Prehensile son-flower – Kronprinzia prehensilis. Son-flower, because the Crown Prince was the son of Kaiser Wilhelm II. Drawn to resemble a sundew, to show how sticky he was. Prehensilis, to suggest clinging to the throne. “Rarely found in the same district”, because the Kaiser was known to detest his son, mainly because of his affairs with women. A HORTICULTURAL SATIRE 5 IBRARY L INDLEY L , RHS Although the Crown Prince was the Commander of the 5th Army, he gave an interview in which he described the War as “senseless, unnecessary and uncalled for” (Wiegand,1915: 4). See Additional Note 1. © 2014 The Royal Horticultural Society 6 BRENT ELLIOTT IBRARY L INDLEY L , RHS I. Sanguinaria williamia. Sanguinaria williamia, i.e. Bloody William; Sanguinariaceae, i.e. bloody family. Wilhelm II, known familiarly in England as Kaiser Bill, was the grandson of Queen Victoria. I wonder whether it is significant that he was never made an Honorary Fellow of the RHS, nor asked to sign a Royal Autograph. A HORTICULTURAL SATIRE 7 IBRARY L INDLEY L , RHS The drawing caricatures his moustache and epaulettes. Western or eastern aspect – the 1905 Schlieffen Plan was intended to avoid a lengthy war on two fronts by using the railways for a speedy and decisive attack on one front, freeing the main armies for more protracted use on the other. © 2014 The Royal Horticultural Society 8 BRENT ELLIOTT IBRARY L INDLEY L , RHS II. The Bernhardi annual – Epistolacia virosa. Bernhardi – a reference to Friedrich von Bernhardi, a German general who in 1911 and 1912 published books predicting, or calling for, a war against England (see Additional Note 2). “Ion-ic” because of Arrhenius’ ionic theory of electricity, and because the columns in the illustration have Ionic capitals (like the Altes Museum and the Munich Glyptothek). A HORTICULTURAL SATIRE 9 IBRARY L INDLEY L , RHS “Epistolacia virosa”, meaning “poisonous letters”. The New York Sun provided a forum in which Karl von Wiegand published articles defending Germany and its conduct of the War (Wiegand, 1915; esp. 19–29, “Chaos in the Rules of War”, and “No Rules of War”). © 2014 The Royal Horticultural Society 10 BRENT ELLIOTT IBRARY L INDLEY L , RHS III. The helmet plant – Militarismus prussianus. “Flower of the army” is a phrase long used in military panegyrics, familiar from Clarendon, Gibbon, and the Oxford edition of Tacitus. “The past forty years”, i.e. since the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, when Germany defeated France, ending the French Second Empire and adding the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine to the German confederation. A HORTICULTURAL SATIRE 11 IBRARY L INDLEY L , RHS The spiked helmet or Pickelhaube had been designed by King Frederick William IV of Prussia (Honorary Fellow of the Horticultural Society, 1825), and adopted throughout Germany after unification. It turned out to offer insufficient protection against shell injuries in the trenches, and was first restricted to court or decorative use, then finally abolished after the War. © 2014 The Royal Horticultural Society 12 BRENT ELLIOTT IBRARY L INDLEY L , RHS IV. The 42-cm. or Giant house-leak. House-leak, from “houseleek”, vernacular name for Sempervivum tectorum, whose shape is mimicked in the cartoon. The 42-cm howitzer, the largest piece of field artillery devised up to that time, was nicknamed “Big Bertha”, after Bertha Krupp, the owner of the Krupp firm which developed the weapon. A HORTICULTURAL SATIRE 13 IBRARY L INDLEY L , RHS It was first used to destroy the Belgian fortresses of Liège and Namur in August 1914. Because of its size, it had to be transported in sections and assembled on site, but while earlier large-scale German howitzers had to be embedded in concrete, Big Bertha did not – despite the cartoon text. © 2014 The Royal Horticultural Society 14 BRENT ELLIOTT IBRARY L INDLEY L , RHS V.